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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203884">Never Enough</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jim_Wicked/pseuds/Jim_Wicked'>Jim_Wicked</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:21:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,028</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203884</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jim_Wicked/pseuds/Jim_Wicked</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Drusilla—his maker, his mad princess—while certainly mercurial, had openly loved him. Her fidelity may have faltered, but her affection had been clear, soft. Buffy was different. Colder, more severe, desiring and despising him all at once. It was wearisome, infuriating, and he thought, maybe, he’d had his fill at last.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Spike/Buffy Summers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Never Enough</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>An interlude between Season Six's "Dead Things" and "Older and Far Away". I wasn't sure if I should label it "Dark", but it may be to some readers.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was much later before she considered that Spike hadn’t fought back.</p><p>She replayed the scene on a loop: straddling him, punching the demon face she loathed long after it reverted to the human guise she lusted for. There were moments when she’d paused while spewing her revulsion for him (and herself, by extension), moments where Spike could have easily ended the onslaught. Instead he’d stared up at her, almost patiently, waiting for more. He’d asked her to explain her suffering, knowing she would speak with her fists, allowing it without resistance.</p><p>Thinking of it, lying sleepless in her bed, eyes gritty from sobbing into Tara’s lap, Buffy realized Spike hadn’t struck her at all since their first night together. He’d restrained her, tossed her around, blocked her blows, but stopped throwing his own. He’d proven he could still hurt her, and since then seemed set on proving he no longer would. Splayed out on the pavement, gory and disoriented, he’d finally convinced her his love was real.</p><p>Great, except she had no idea what to do with it. Even if she wanted to, Buffy had nothing to offer in return. She felt as though someone had scooped out her insides, leaving diaphanous skin stretched like canvas over an empty, exhausted skeleton. Sometimes it hurt to move, to breathe. The atmosphere seemed heavy; gravity too strong. It was a marvel she could speak, or fuck, or cry. She was more of a reanimated corpse than Spike had ever been, and she blamed him. For what he was. What he could never be.</p><p>His devotion was unmatched, a canine loyalty, but it changed nothing. And when he claimed it could, in truth he was speaking solely of his behavior. He could be good <em>to</em> her, and he’d do good <em>for </em>her, but none of that made <em>him</em> good. Spike couldn’t understand the difference, and Buffy couldn’t ignore it. </p><p>He’d had no attack of conscience; he felt no remorse. Each time he touched her, drawing pleasure from her like nothing she’d ever experienced, it was with the same shameless hands that had tortured myriad innocents. His dizzying kisses were bestowed by the same lips that had latched onto thousands of vulnerable necks, sucking them dry, discarding the husks unapologetically, like trash littered on the side of a highway. Not just for food, but for <em>amusement</em>, because that was what Spike had considered it—and still did. When the chip prevented him from harming living things, he’d begun killing demons precisely because they were what he was <em>able </em>to kill. As the Slayer, how could she look past the lifeless human bodies heaped up around him, when the glaring fact was military technology and romantic notions of winning her heart were all that restrained him from adding to the pile?</p><p>It was disgraceful, how low she’d sunk. She was meant to be righteous. To stake unrepentant vampires, not use one of them as her personalized Sybian machine, her sentient punching bag. Through Spike she was self-medicating; it was escapism by way of sex and violence. And it was wrong of her, but the alternative was wholly unacceptable—this numbness, a thick coating of ice that only thawed under the heat of his perverse attention. Good-fucking-God, the things he did to her. Things she enjoyed in spite of herself. Things she’d come to crave, exactly as he said she would. He’d found her basest impulses, reveling in them, constantly encouraging her to indulge them.</p><p>And now denying them. Since that night at the precinct, he’d ghosted her, stopped showing up at the Palace, or dogging her on patrol, or smoking behind the tree in her front yard. She actually missed him.</p><p>She hated herself for missing him.</p><p>She hated herself.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>By nature, and by deed, Spike was an evil, soulless thing.</p><p>Not too long ago, Buffy saying as much would have been the highest compliment. He’d always delighted in his demon; vampirism had emancipated him from a life he surely would have squandered in polite Victorian society. Rather than a middling existence—followed by a protracted decline and death from consumption—he’d grown powerful; he’d killed, and he’d conquered, and he’d had more fucking fun than he’d ever imagined possible. He wasn’t ashamed of any of it…but Buffy was, and his love for her wouldn’t allow that not to matter.</p><p>He had tried to help her that night, save her from self-destruction. That had been his goal each night since her return. She was as brittle as old bones, and he was following her around making certain she didn’t shatter to pieces beneath the weight of playing Saint Slayer. She needed someone with whom she could be authentic. She needed looking after, and he wanted to give her whatever she needed, even if that meant giving in to a beat down. He’d been prepared for blood and bruises, but as usual, her words had done far more damage than her fists.</p><p>Drusilla—his maker, his mad princess—while certainly mercurial, had openly loved him. Her fidelity may have faltered, but her affection had been clear, soft. Buffy was different. Colder, more severe, desiring and despising him all at once. It was wearisome, infuriating, and he thought, maybe, he’d had his fill at last.</p><p>Until he felt her lingering outside his door again.</p><p>Although Spike’s face was wounded and his heart still ached, his traitorous body experienced a jolt at Buffy’s presence—the electric hum of her arousal, tempered as it was by doubt, disgust. Such a conflicted little bitch.</p><p>“Slayer,” he called, crossing his arms, leaning against the sarcophagus behind him.</p><p>Silence except for the hastening of her pulse. She was holding her breath.</p><p>“Know you’re there,” he said. “Make up your mind, then.”</p><p>The heavy door swung open and Buffy entered, black miniskirt slit up the thigh, calf-high boots over otherwise bare legs. The long sleeves of a sheer white blouse offered little protection from the chilly night air. Her lips were tinted, her eyelids lightly shadowed. This deliberate effort was a manipulation, to be sure, but Spike was intrigued all the same.</p><p>“I see you’re not clapped in irons.”</p><p>He said this flippantly, as if he hadn’t already known, and didn’t care. As if he hadn’t kept himself attuned to any news of her. He still wished he’d done a better job of hiding that body, but he was practiced in the creation of corpses, not their disposal.</p><p>Buffy sighed, shook her head. “Turns out it was Warren. The woman who…she was his ex. He was trying to frame me.”</p><p>“Robot Boy and his lackeys have become more trouble than they’re worth,” Spike scoffed.</p><p>“Yeah. But it looks like they’ve gone underground. Willow’s working on locating them,” she said, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from her outfit.</p><p>His eyes tracked the movement of her hands down the lines of her figure. “And you?”</p><p>“Well, I’ve never been much good at research. Thought I’d hit the streets.”</p><p>He raised a scarred brow. “If all you’re lookin’ for is information, haven’t got any. Those gits don’t rate in the demon world.”</p><p>“Of course not. It’s just…” She approached carefully, like walking on a newly frozen lake. “I haven’t seen you around in a few days.”</p><p>Five, to be exact. Was <em>she</em> counting?</p><p>Spike gestured to his battered face. “Could say I finally got the message.”</p><p>She cringed, the visible evidence of her own darkness shaking that irritating air of superiority. He took a certain amount of pleasure in this show of discomfort.</p><p>“I shouldn’t have,” she whispered.</p><p>It was an admission, not an apology. The girl was feeling poorly for herself rather than him, bothered more by what she was capable of than that he’d suffered for it. And though he knew he’d absolve her regardless, he wanted to postpone it, preserve his pride a few minutes longer.</p><p>Her hand rose as if to touch his swollen eye, his sore jaw, then fell back to her side without connecting. He stepped around her to take a seat, stared blankly at whatever was playing on TV, forcing himself to ignore her.</p><p>She moved to stand in front of him, trailing the scent of coconuts, a perfumed body wash considerably more appealing to his heightened senses than the artificial-meat smell of her sad little McJob. His hands twitched with the urge to touch her, skim his fingertips along her inner thigh. Instead, he reached for the Marlboros resting on the arm of his chair. Lit up, exhaling smoke in her direction.</p><p>“Why are you here, Buffy?”</p><p>“Oh, come on.” She glanced down at her clothing, back at him, a self-conscious half-smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. “Do you realize how cold it is out there? I’m not exactly being subtle.”</p><p>She looked expectant, but he refused to meet her halfway. She’d have to acknowledge her appetite without reservation—this once. He remained silent, took another pull on his cigarette.</p><p>“OK,” she said slowly, stepping closer, stance wide. “I want to be here.”</p><p>“That a fact?” he asked as coolly as he could manage.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>A slight hesitation before, “I want you<em>.</em>”</p><p>Cor, what that must have cost her to admit. And how alone she must feel, to have nowhere else to turn but the same old enemy she’d spat venom on less than a week before. He could sense his resolve slipping, his anger guttering. He snatched hold of it before it could extinguish, fanned the flame by reminding himself that however adrift she was at present, it wouldn’t be long before she made him pay for those words. Before she took them back. He may as well enjoy himself.</p><p>He said, “So prove it.”</p><p>Her expression first went stony at his audacity, then yielded. She dropped to her knees in front of him, unfastening his belt, the button on his jeans. Pulling him out, his erection overfilled her small hands, grew harder as she parted her lips around it. The warmth of her mouth, the softness of her tongue, was like being dipped in honey. He leaned back in his chair, cigarette balanced between his lips, watching her through curls of smoke. She had her eyes closed, finding her rhythm, shorn hair swishing around her delicate neck.</p><p>Hair she’d cut simply because he’d admired it.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Without warning Spike grabbed her shoulders, roughly hauling her up and off him so fast her teeth clicked together on air. He lifted her to straddle his lap; Buffy scrambled to get her knees under her, the coarse fabric of the chair rubbing against her legs. His hands slid down her arms, crossing them behind her back, a firm squeeze telling her to leave them there. She complied as he pulled his belt from its loops, wound and buckled it into cuffs around her wrists. She’d grown accustomed to being trussed up in various ways; she’d grown to like it, ceding control. Unburdening herself of responsibility. This is what she’d missed, the disinhibition that followed in Spike’s wake. While she was with him, the grave she’d crawled from felt further away, the alluring pull of heaven lessened.</p><p>“What’s the game, Spike?”</p><p>Seizing her neck with one hand, he dragged her forward, close enough to feel the heat from the glowing tip of his cigarette. When she winced, he took a final drag before flicking the cherry across the room, not bothering to check where it landed.</p><p>“Sometimes I hate loving you so much I can’t bear it,” he snarled, tone laden with that smoldering fury he exhibited when insulted. Not the ire of an enemy, but of a man who adored her even as it was torturing him.</p><p>A response eluded her. Was she supposed to feel sorry for him? Was she supposed to make loving her easier on him? Would it be, if only she weren’t still half-dead? No man had ever found her easy to love before; why should Spike be any different?</p><p>He compressed her throat until she had trouble breathing. She reflexively attempted to free her wrists, but he’d secured them expertly, the leather in good condition. A frisson of anxiety shot through her, surpassed in the next second by anticipation as he reached under her dress and tore off her underwear. She’d lost so many pairs this way.</p><p>“But my heart is yours,” he continued as he lowered her onto him. “No matter how many times you grind it under your heel.”</p><p>She emitted a strangled groan, relishing his fit, the way he occupied her fully so there was no room for anything else, least of all rational thought, thank Christ.</p><p>She should reject this; it was dangerous, permitting him to work out his anger this way. Still, as he drove himself deeper—his grip on her throat tightening with each thrust—her hips moved in time with his, her cunt pulsed around his cock. She clasped his waist between her thighs, snugging him tightly against her clit. She would let him have his retaliation. Let him have whatever he wanted, so long as it felt this fucking <em>good</em>. Maybe it was a line they shouldn’t cross, but really, what was one more?</p><p>“You say you don’t believe me, don’t trust me. But you must, to be here night after night, knowing I could kill you.” His gaze bore into her, blue eyes gone dark with passion and rage. “I could drain you dry as you spend beneath me. I could break your neck any time you fall asleep beside me.”</p><p>There was a guilty thrill to hearing this, the seductive purr of his voice binding her more thoroughly than his belt.</p><p>“That excites you, does it?” It wasn’t a question. He could probably smell it on her, the effect his words were having.</p><p>His power was part of the appeal. It was no coincidence that their first fuck had come on the tail end of a long-overdue fight; that she’d let herself give in to him directly after he’d reminded her how brutal he could be. With Spike she didn’t have to hold back, afraid to hurt or horrify him. He could match the violence inside her, take and dish it out in equal measure. She needed him, to make her feel, make her warm, make this third-hand existence tolerable for hours at a stretch.</p><p>It wasn’t the same as love. Or trust. And it wasn’t enough for him. He would always want more of her than she was equipped to give. This would have to stop eventually.</p><p>But not now.</p><p>She began to shake as her climax neared; she leaned into Spike’s grasp, the pressure and lack of oxygen heightening every sense. Her skin was buzzing, clit throbbing, heart beating a bass drum against her sternum. The feeling of falling from a great height, black spots dotting her vision. She came forcefully, a shotgun blast of an orgasm, unaware that Spike had released his hold on her neck until her shout echoed around the crypt.</p><p>“You wretched bint,” he murmured as she slowly recovered, his forehead pressed against hers, breathing jaggedly along with her although he had no need to. “I can’t kill you. And you’ll be the death of me.”</p><p>Gulping air, Buffy pretended not to have heard.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She snapped his belt in half when she came. Could have done it sooner if she’d really tried, but he knew Buffy preferred to pretend she was helpless against him. It excused her, allowed her to believe she wasn’t an entirely willing participant in their sordid affair. He couldn’t blame her for dissembling; Spike lied to himself constantly where she was concerned. Told himself she’d love him someday, or that she already did. Told himself all sorts of comforting falsehoods to warrant sticking around; he just wasn’t quite so good at believing them. He’d not mastered self-deception the way she had.</p><p>Buffy wriggled in his lap, the remnants of his belt dangling in leather bracelets from her slender wrists, short nails digging into his shoulders, eager mouth searching for his. They kissed greedily as he stood and carried her to perch on the sarcophagus, disconnecting to hastily shuck their clothes, then slamming back together as though the absence of touch had lasted several more days rather than a handful of seconds.</p><p>Winding one arm behind her back, Spike braced the other on the coffin lid, his grip so forceful it was a wonder the stone didn’t crumble. As he fucked her, he imagined it was the Slayer’s neck still in his fist. Might even be a mercy, given the way she was carrying on. She’d been mourning her resurrection for months. The mere fact of existence was burdensome to her, and she was using him to ease her affliction. Spike knew it, and that it couldn’t last. He wished he could end it, end <em>her, </em>before she utterly destroyed him. But the idea of missing a single moment with this girl—her succulent tits pressed against his chest, wet quim nipping at his prick, throaty moans sounding in his ears—was unthinkable, impossible. He’d never be free of her.</p><p>Lovesick fool.</p><p>Buffy clutched at him, scratching his skin like she was trying to claw it open and climb inside. Spike welcomed her freneticism; she hated to hear it, but whatever preternatural force Slayers were made of paired seamlessly with his demon. It was bliss having her wild and reckless, undiluted by the funereal fog she’d become shrouded in. Whether or not she ever confessed it, during these stolen hours, she was his. It wasn’t the same as love. But it was something. And it was real.</p><p>With her hands loose, she could have pushed him away, punishment for the liberties he’d taken, for the purpling marks she’d have to cover with makeup in the morning lest her friends start asking questions. But that would signal the end of tonight’s game, and she clearly wasn’t ready. She hadn’t had nearly enough yet, and neither had he.</p><p>This would have to stop eventually.</p><p>“Don’t stop,” she gasped between kisses, drawing her knees up, inviting him deeper.</p><p>But not now.</p><p>Not now.</p>
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